Bear Repair
by you-didnt-thank-any1
Summary: When Ruthie Babcock's beloved teddy suffers an accident, C.C. goes to Niles for help. But why won't she allow him to fix the toy himself? Post-series.


"Niles!" The call resonated throughout the Beverly Hills apartment. The butler's name continued to be shouted until C.C. Babcock poked her head through the doorway of the kitchen and found her husband washing breakfast dishes. "I need you. Right now."

Niles looked up from his work as C.C. stormed in. When he saw the flushed look on his wife's face, he let one of his eyebrows raise suggestively. "Well, I'm a bit swamped," he grinned as he stepped around the counter, starting to undo the ties on his apron. "But I'm sure I can pencil you in."

"Keep it in your pants, Romeo," C.C. snapped, clearly not in the mood for either sex or jokes at the moment. She lifted her hand up to eye-level and shoved its contents into Niles's face. "I'm talking about this!"

Niles's eyes widened as he realized what the mess of light brown fake fur and white stuffing that C.C. held in her hand was. Although it was mangled almost beyond recognition, Niles could still identify his daughter's teddy bear. "How in the world did this happen?"

"Ruthie let Chester sleep in her room again last night."

Niles couldn't help but chuckle as he shook his head. "Eleven years old, and that dog's as tenacious as ever," he smiled. Still laughing to himself, he reached his hand out to take the ruined toy from his wife. "Alright then, give him here. I can stitch him back together."

"No!" C.C. exclaimed. She suddenly yanked the beat away from Niles's grasp. "I don't want _you_ to fix him!

"Then why did you bring him to me?" Niles asked, confused.

C.C. paused for a moment, as if she were unsure of how she was going to phrase her answer. "I'm going to fix him," she began, and if Niles didn't know her as well as he did, he wouldn't have noticed that her voice was a bit softer than usual. "And… and I need you to help me."

For the second time in under a minute, Niles's eyes opened wide in surprise. "C.C. Babcock wanting to do a domestic chore?" he asked incredulously with a hint of mirth in his voice. "What's this world coming to?"

"You better watch it, Mister, or I'll stop _doing_ domestics, period!" C.C. tossed back. Niles's face broke into a small smile; after six years of marriage, their back-and-forth never failed to exhilarate him. His wife noticed his pleased grin and, forgetting to catch herself, almost let Niles have enough time to respond with a comeback of his own before she got back to business. "Just get me the damn sewing kit!"

Niles, deciding it would be best to cooperate, just shook his head as he made his way to one of the kitchen cupboards. He rooted around in a drawer until he retrieved one of the many sewing kits he kept around the apartment for all the emergencies that raising a young child brought up. "I'm surprised you're asking for my help," he commented as he brought the kit to C.C. Without so much as a thank you, she snatched the kit from him and sat down at one of the barstools near the counter to begin her work. Niles watched her for a few moments as she took a needle and some thread from the small box and stabbed the beaten-up bear with gusto. "Loath as I am to bring this up, I distinctly remember you having experience with sewing dresses."

C.C. would have chuckled, or at least smirked, at the memory of treating her husband as a dresser's mannequin had her entire face not been furrowed in concentration while looking down at her current project. "There's a difference between putting a needle through some old rags just to humiliate you and stitching together our child's bear. Ow!" C.C.'s thumb instantly went into her mouth as she attempted to suck the pain from the small wound she had just given herself.

Her husband sighed softly, becoming more aggravated than amused at this point by the sight of the businesswoman burying herself so intently into the domestic task. "C.C., just let me…" he began, reaching for the toy.

"No!" C.C. exclaimed, once again keeping the bear from Niles's reach. "Just tell me what to do."

Niles felt a headache begin to form, but decided it was in his best interest to just go with his wife's demand. "You need to do a blind stitch if you don't want to see the thread," he explained. He held out his hand to take the bear and demonstrate, and when she refused to give it to him he sighed and reached for a spare bit of fabric and a needle from the sewing kit. Taking a seat in the barstool next to hers, he began to work and pretended not to notice when C.C. took peeks at his masterful sewing technique.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Niles making stitch after stitch in the small fabric square while C.C. tried her best to copy him on their daughter's favorite toy. While neither of them spoke the thought out loud, they both found comfort in spending a quiet moment in each other's company. This sort of quality time had become less and less available a Ruthie grew up and, while neither would give up their little girl for anything, it was pleasant for the couple to spend a comfortable silence together. The quiet was broken only when Chester came in for a drink of water, his toenails clicking on the hard linoleum floor. He made his way towards his water dish, lapped up just enough to quench his thrist, then left the room without a glance towards the lovers.

"How's this?" C.C. asked after several minutes of hard work, holding up the fruits of her labor for Niles to examine.

"Good, if you were trying to give him a tummy tuck," Niles answered. He pointed to the teddy bear's concave stomach, and C.C. swore when she saw the stuffing that should have been giving the toy a round belly lying in clumps on the floor. "I still don't see what you're so worked up about," Niles said as C.C. bent down to pick up the white fluff. "What difference does it make who patches up her bear?"

"You don't know what happened this morning," C.C. said. Niles didn't reply, hoping that she would continue on her own. Taking a deep breath, C.C. began to explain. "Ruthie came to me this morning in tears, and she begged me to ask you to fix him."

"So?" Niles prompted, still not understanding.

"_So?! _She didn't ask _me_!" C.C. slammed her hands down onto the bear in frustration, sticking herself with the needle again in the process.

"Well it's not as if _you've_ been mending the clothes she rips on the playground for the past four years." Niles pointed out. He took C.C.'s newly injured hand and pet it, soothing her. "She knows I have the experience required to fix him."

"Yeah, but…" C.C. started, trying her best to form her response. She kept her gaze down on her hand, still enveloped between her husband's larger and work-worn ones. "I'm not around a lot, Niles."

The tone of her voice and her choice of words startled Niles. "How do you mean?" he asked gently.

"Ruthie's five now," C.C. said sadly. "I want to fix this stupid thing because I need her to know that I care about her, and that I can take care of her like a mother should."

Again, Niles was shocked by C.C.'s words, but he recovered quickly enough to try and ease her worries. "Oh, that's not fair. You can't be expected to be at home all the time to perform traditional wifely duties. That's my job." When C.C. didn't respond to his own self-depreciation, he moved on to more serious territory. "And don't underplay the role you play in this household; that's my job too. You work to bring home the bacon, after all."

"But Ruthie doesn't care about that!" C.C. argued. She looked up into her husband's face and saw that he was about to refute that statement somehow. "Oh, come on, you know it's true Niles. While I'm at meetings all day and spending god-knows how many days away from home on business trips, she's growing up…" She swallowed suddenly, aware of the stinging sensation building up behind her eyes. "Growing up without me."

Niles resisted the overwhelming urge to take the love of his life into his arms and rub her back in comforting circles, knowing that she would resist him unless she was the one to come to him. "Maybe Ruthie doesn't recognize how much you work now," he said, settling for a well-thought out argument rather than such an intimate display of affection. "But when she's old enough to understand the concept of money and providing for a family, she's going to be so grateful for the life and privileges that you've provided for us."

C.C. was unconvinced. "So what am I supposed to do until then?" she asked, drawing her hands away from Niles's warm hold. "Just work my butt off for fourteen years while Ruthie becomes a moody teenager without me around?"

"No," Niles answered. His reply was so immediate and was spoken with such conviction that it caused C.C. to look back at him once more. "Because Ruthie _isn't_ growing up without you around. You know perfectly well what it's like to have parents that don't take an interest in their child's lives, and you've done everything to make sure Ruthie doesn't have that kind of childhood. Do you know how much she loves it when you read her bedtime stories or take her to work with you during her school holidays?" When C.C. couldn't find anything to argue against that point, Niles lowered his voice and once again took her hands in his. "And sure, you can't cook to save your life and you'd rather stop dyeing your hair than vacuum the apartment, but that's not the type of mother you are. You're the type of mother that's going to teach her daughter how to put over-confident men and people with over-inflated egos in their place. Ruthie's never going to let someone walk all over her because she has you to look up to. She knows firsthand that a woman can make it in a male-dominated business. She's going to grow up learning how to be strong, brave, and smart, and that's all thanks to you."

As he finished his speech, Niles considerately chose not to draw attention to the few tears falling from C.C.'s eyes. He was rewarded with the hug he so desperately wanted to give when C.C. leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Niles pulled her closer, resting his chin atop her head. "You've got that right," her muffled voice said into his chest. "She's definitely not learning how to use her brains from _you._"

Niles let out a half laugh-half sigh, pleased that they were back to their normal dynamic. He allowed himself one final sniff of his wife's intoxicating hair before pulling away from her. He took up his fabric and needle in one hand and handed the half-completed teddy towards C.C. with the other. "Now if I'm not mistaken, you still have a teddy bear to fix."

\/

At three o'clock, Ruthie Babcock came through the front door of the apartment, having said goodbye to Fran and the twins who had dropped her off in the lobby. Chester looked up from his living-room basket and slowly made his way towards the girl. Ruthie gave the old dog a hug, any grudge over the destruction of her teddy forgotten over the course of a day at kindergarten, and it was a testament to Chester's affection for the little blonde Babcock that he resisted the urge to snap at her. "Hi Mommy," the child said as she spotted her mother reading over some forms on the couch. Leaving Chester to collect his dignity, she went up to C.C. and sat beside her, snuggling into her side.

"Hi Sweetie," C.C. smiled, putting an arm around the little girl and kissing her on the forehead. "How was school?"

"Good," Ruthie smiled, showing off the new gap left by a lost baby tooth. "I did what you told me and put glue in the backpack of that boy who said that girls couldn't do math."

"That's my girl," C.C. said as she reached between the couch cushions "And as a reward, I have a surprise for you."

The expression on the little girl's face went from content to rapturous as C.C. pulled the like-new teddy bear into view. "He's fixed!" Ruthie gasped. She took the bear from C.C. and hugged the repaired stuffed animal with all of her strength. "I have to go thank Daddy!" she announced as she hopped off of the couch.

"I'm not the one you have to thank." The two Babcocks turned to see Niles standing in the doorway, smiling as he surveyed the scene. "Mommy patched him up for you."

"Really?" The girl sounded unconvinced as she looked back and forth between her parents, searching for a sign that they were trying to fool her. When she found nothing but sincerity in the eyes of both mother and father, she turned back to C.C. with an expression that wasn't quite devoid of skepticism. "Um, thank you Mommy," she said, going to hug her mother. C.C. smiled over her daughter's head, meeting Niles's gaze with a relieved look in her eyes. She mouthed a "thank you" to her husband, entirely grateful.

Niles smiled back at his wife, and was sensitive enough not to draw attention to the fact that Ruthie was inspecting her teddy with a slightly worried look on her young face.


End file.
